Privacy PowerUp #11
In today’s digital landscape, managing personal data carries significant responsibility. The introduction of new systems, projects, or technologies, as well as modifications to existing processes like integrating AI, can create privacy vulnerabilities. Privacy risk assessments are crucial tools for early identification and mitigation of these risks throughout the process of product, system, or service design, development, and implementation.
Think of privacy risk assessments as essential risk mitigation tools. They help you identify, evaluate, and manage privacy risks associated with processing personal data. This applies to everything from launching a new app to updating your customer relationship management system.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach around what type of assessment to do when. Businesses have different tolerances for risk and their approach for managing it. Different situations call for different types of assessments. There are five different types of privacy risk assessments conducted.
Privacy risk assessment types
Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA)
A PIA, sometimes referred to as a Data Protection Assessment (DPA) in the US, is required under some US state Consumer Privacy laws (Virginia, Colorado, and Connecticut) for data processing activities with heightened risk of harm to individuals. PIAs are designed to determine how a program or service may affect an individual’s privacy and consider potential harms to individual’s rights and privacy from known risks.
Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA)
Under the EU GDPR, DPIAs are legally required when data processing is likely to pose a high risk to individuals’ rights and freedoms. High-risk processing activities often include: evaluation or scoring, automated decision-making with legal effects, systematic monitoring, and processing sensitive data at a large scale. Many EU countries have blacklists and whitelists indicating when a DPIA is necessary.
In many ways, a PIA and a DPIA are similar; both help identify potential personal data processing risks within a business. The DPIA is conducted when there is a high risk and specifically focuses on determining if individuals’ rights and freedoms are at risk, whereas a PIA can be used for a wider range of projects. Some companies may choose to conduct a risk assessment for certain types of data processing activities or whenever new technology is being developed.
Privacy Threshold Assessment
A Privacy Threshold Assessment determines whether a deeper assessment, like a PIA or DPIA, is necessary. The information gathered, such as data types, processing purpose, impacted individuals, and data volume, mirrors what’s in your Record of Processing Activity (ROPA). You can use your ROPA to identify if a more in-depth assessment is needed.
Legitimate Interest Assessment (LIA)
A LIA is essential when “legitimate interest” is the lawful basis for processing personal information. It determines if such processing is lawful and if business needs outweigh individual privacy rights. The UK ICO recommends a 3-step process: the purpose test, the necessity test, and the balancing test.
Examples of legitimate interests include client relationships, fraud prevention, network security, and indicating potential criminal acts.
Transfer Impact Assessment (TIA)
If you are transferring personal information outside your jurisdiction, a TIA is necessary. The TIA is conducted before transferring information outside the controller’s jurisdiction to evaluate the safeguards in place in the recipient country and ensure there is a level of protection comparable to the transferring country.
Benefits of conducting privacy risk assessments
Conducting privacy risk assessments requires an investment of time, money, and resources to complete, review, and mitigate identified risks. However, the benefits for businesses are significant:
- Regulatory compliance: Meets the requirements of applicable privacy laws.
- Implementing privacy by design: Embeds privacy into processing activities, reducing risk from the outset and lowering the cost and necessity of future fixes.
- Risk identification: Pinpoints potential risks to personal information early on.
- Early remediation: Allows forthe timely implementation of strategies to reduce or eliminate risks, thereby reducing business costs.
- Transparency: Provides a clear understanding of data flows, systems, and vendors.
Considerations for effective privacy risk assessments
To maximize the effectiveness of your privacy assessments, keep the following in mind:
- Assessment design: Tailor your assessment design to the nature, scope, context, and purposes of data processing, while also adhering to regulatory requirements.
- Assessment timing: Conduct assessments proactively before processing begins, on a regular basis, and whenever changes occur in your risk profile.
- Assessment prioritization: Leverage data from your ROPAs to pinpoint data processing activities that could significantly impact individuals. Prioritize assessments for these high-impact activities.
- Assessment results: Utilize the findings from your assessments to guide and inform your risk mitigation strategies.
- Reporting: Document your findings comprehensively in a report to demonstrate the actions taken and ensure accountability.
- Record keeping: Maintain meticulous records of all conducted assessments.
- Regular validation: Periodically validate your assessments, particularly for higher-risk data processing activities. Since an assessment is a snapshot in time, ensure that data protection measures remain consistently in place, especially for high-risk processing.
By understanding and implementing privacy assessments, you can proactively manage privacy risks, build trust with your stakeholders, and ensure compliance in an increasingly data-driven world.
Continue mastering the privacy essentials by reviewing all the resources in the Privacy PowerUp series.
PowerUp Your Privacy
Watch all the videos in the Privacy PowerUp series – designed to help professionals master the privacy essentials.
Watch nowRead the next article in this series: #12 Contracts that Count: Mastering the 10 Most Negotiated Provisions in a Data Processing Agreement.
Read more from the Privacy PowerUp Series:
- Getting Started in Privacy
- Data Collection, Minimization, Retention, Deletion, and Necessity
- Data Inventories, Mapping, and Records of Process
- Understanding Data Subject Rights (Individual Rights) and Their Importance
- The Foundation of Privacy Contracting
- Choice and Consent: Key Strategies for Data Privacy
- Managing the Complexities of International Data Transfers and Onward Transfers
- Emerging Technologies in Privacy: AI and Machine Learning
- Privacy Program Management: Buy-In, Governance, and Hierarchy
- Managing Privacy Across the Organization
- Assess the Risk Before it Hits
- Contracts that Count: Mastering the 10 Most Negotiated Provisions in a Data Processing Agreement
- Selling and Sharing Personal Information
- Building a Privacy-Approved Vendor Management Program
- Tracking Technologies: The Hidden Backbone of AdTech and the Looming Privacy Minefield
- Data Inventory: Next-Level Classification for Privacy Professionals
- Incident Incoming–Now What?
